Knights (424 BCE) is one of Aristophanes’ unloved comedies, rarely appearing on college syllabuses and having only nineteen performances recorded in the APGRD data-base for the last fifty years. Its unpopularity may partly be explained by the lack of a major commentary in English—Sommerstein (1982) and Anderson & Dix (2020) are both aimed at a student readership and are not as detailed as the OUP/Clarendon series. Also understanding the comedy depends on a detailed knowledge of Athenian politics, personalities and current events—Halliwell’s new translation (2022) supplies 215 explanatory endnotes—and on appreciating Aristophanes’ comic diction and his densely packed imagery. Norwood (1931: 207-8) had earlier offered a more blunt assessment: ‘The Knights is a bad and stupid play … Aristophanes has spoiled his play by losing his temper … here is unremitting rancour’. Henderson, however, in his Preface to Men and Their Horses strongly disagrees, deeming Knights ‘a flat-out Aristophanic masterpiece’ (xi).[1]
Although the authors insist that theirs is a ‘translation’ (xvi), what they have really done is to adapt Aristophanes’ attack on Cleon to suit the contemporary American political situation. Donald Trump becomes ‘Drumpf’, a newly hired senior staffer for one Guy Demos of Main Street. ‘Drumpf’ evidently alludes to Trump’s foreign ancestry (xxviii), in the same way they argue that Aristophanes’ calling Cleon ‘Paphlagon’ implied a suspect background for that demagogue, Paphlagonia being a source of Athenian slaves. But neither Simmons nor the authors consider the more likely source for ‘Paphlagon’ as paphlazein (‘shoot one’s mouth off’)—Cleon’s distinctive style of public speaking being a major piece of comedy’s caricature (see line 137 and elsewhere).[2] But almost all ancient references to persons or places are either eliminated—at 18 kompseuripikōs, ‘cleverly Euripidean’, becomes ‘uber-tragilistically clever’, and Pylos, scene of Cleon ‘s recent triumph, is never mentioned by name—or the names are altered—e.g., at 280 prytaneion becomes the ‘Capitol’ and at 615 ‘Council’ ‘Congress’. Thus ‘adaptation’ seems a more accurate term. However, the hymns in the parabasis (551-64, 581-94) remain addressed to Poseidon and Athena.
The characters are those from Aristophanes’ comedy. The two staffers retain their Greek names of Nicias and Demosthenes. But as mentioned above, Demos (the People) has become Guy Demos and the villain is called ‘Drumpf’. The Sausage-Seller, never a happy designation, has rather nicely become ‘Hot Dog Man’. At the end the non-speaking but attractive spondai appear as ‘Accords’, also present is the pais (‘young man’) with the ‘recliner’, but his physical endowment (enorchon) is left unmentioned. So too the familiar structural units of the Aristophanic play are found: introductory explanatory scenes, arrival of Hot Dog Man, the first agōn with Drumpf, parabasis, second agōn with Drumpf ending with Hot Dog Man triumphant, second parabasis, and an upbeat finale with Guy rejuvenated and an older order re-established.
But in the parabasis the authors faced a problem. After replacing Athens with the modern American setting, how should they handle the parabasis proper (507-50), where Aristophanes’ chorus speaks to the spectators about their poet’s own career and the experiences of three other comic poets? The solution was to have the chorus speak, not for Aristophanes, but for the authors themselves on the dangers that beset translating Aristophanes, an apologia, as it were, pro labore suo,[3] The first section, corresponding to lines 507-17, is intended to be sung to the tune of ‘The Gambler’, and I did find myself humming along with ‘the Muses know when to tell you, / know when to scold you, / know when to walk away, / and know when to pun’. But I did miss Aristophanes’ parabasis proper on the perils of writing comedy, as it is surely the best-known and most often cited passage from Knights. In both the first parabasis and the later second, the sub-sections need to be more clearly delineated on the page, to show where the songs end and the ‘speeches’ (epirrhēmata) begin—especially on pages 84-5. Well handled also was the antepirrhēma of the second parabasis (1300-15), especially when the triremes (fem.) promise ‘that man will never shiver my well-made timbers’. In the original ‘that man’ was Hyperbolus, but here he remains nameless.
In his introduction Simmons outlines a paederastic theme in the play, attempting to distinguish Drumpf as the friend (philos) of Guy Demos and Hot Dog Man as a rival suitor (erastēs), a distinction that Lippman and Major develop in their notes to the text. Simmons points out (xxvi) that ‘Guy is clearly not a teenager’ and that the audience would have considered this a comic reversal of the social norm. But it should be noted that there was in Athens in the 420s a handsome young man named Demos—his father Pyrilampes was an associate of Pericles and step-father of Plato—who is called a kalos at Wasps 98. So when Cleon or any other popular politician claimed to be ‘a friend/lover of the People’, the young Demos would surely spring humorously to mind.
There has always been a problem with what to call this comedy. The Greek word hippeis, usually rendered as ‘Knights’, designated Athenian citizens who could afford to buy and maintain horses for service in combat and who formed the second-highest rank in Solon’s sub-divisions of Athenian society (Arist. Ath.Pol. 7.3). They displayed a traditionalism in their long hair and ostentatious mode of dress and could be accused of pro-Spartan leanings (Kn. 578. 1121; Cl. 14-16 et al.).[4] Thus a translation has to cover both their military role and also their wealthy and privileged status in Athenian society. ‘Knights’ has too many overtones of mediaeval chivalry or the British Honours List, ‘cavalry’ or ‘cavalrymen’ reminds one of the classic American western and lacks the necessary social cachet. MacDowell’s (1995: 80) more neutral term ‘Horsemen’ does somewhat cover both senses. Delanty (1999), preferring to emphasise the social aspect of the term, titled his translation ‘The Suits’.[5]
The authors have called their adaptation ‘Men and Their Horses’ to make the title easier for modern readers, but as that is a bit of a mouthful, they call the chorus ‘cowboys’. While this may suit an American adaptation, it lacks the societal implications of the original, since ‘cowboys’ are hardly a privileged social group. Moreover, ‘cowboy’ brings with it an inelegant (to my ear at least) mode of speech, with constant vulgarisms such as ‘git’, ‘ain’t’, ‘’em or ‘im’ or ‘in’ as a participle ending. This may be appropriate for the two lower-class combatants, but when the chorus descend to, ‘Smack ‘im! Git ‘im! Hit ‘im up! Run’ im down! / He’s a troll him! Like we are! Make ‘im holler! / Make sure he doesn’t hoof it outta here!’ (251-3), this takes us far too far from what Aristophanes created. Overall I did not find in this adaptation the poet about whom Plato claimed that the Graces, looking for an eternal shrine, ‘found the soul of Aristophanes’.[6]
Aristophanes has his ‘Demosthenes’ at 225-7 promise the Sausage-Seller that he will have as allies ‘a thousand brave hippeis who hate him…. and the good and noble citizenry’. Now the modern equivalents of the Athenian cavalry class would be ‘the horsey set’ in the U.K. or a Boston Brahmin or a Deep-South gentleman in America. Simmons does admit that the ‘chorus of “cowboys” in this play speak from the perspective of the class of wealthy Athenians’ (xxvii), but this is rarely evident in the text. Obviously an adaptation need not slavishly follow its model, but here is a significant departure from the original.
The scene at the end when Hot Dog Man returns with a rejuvenated Demos was well done with a notable rise in tone and style and also some good verbal plays: ‘land of the free and the home of depraved’ (1263), ‘may your waves of grain be amber’ (1334), and ‘to plow the fields and prosper’ (1393-4). But they do not come to terms with Guy Demos and Hot Dog Man now rejecting the same populist tactics that the latter had used against the Drumpf. On the scheme I proposed above, could Hot Dog Man perhaps have revealed himself, not as ‘Frank Street Weiser’ (1259), but as a graduate of an Ivy League university living rough, on the model of the Pirates of Penzance, who we find ‘were all noblemen who have gone wrong’?
Despite my misgivings about the low level of the language—I could have done without the excessive repetition of ‘deplorable’ as an insult—there were passages of wit worthy of Aristophanes. Some which caught my attention were: Drumpf the tanner ‘so tanned he’s orange’, ‘may I continue to reside in the Oval Office / by defunding, I mean defending, the majority’ (765); ‘my unpresidented election win’ (844); describing the proposal to sail against Carthage, ‘the sus-Pence of the idea is shocking’ (1305); and a nice bit of alliteration, ‘a snatcher, a screecher, with the septic sound of sewer slime’ (136).
For some of the choral lyrics they suggest a particular song-tune. Sommerstein in the second Penguin volume similarly set the words of his songs to music from Gilbert & Sullivan; Peter Meineck in his recent Frogs also proposed existing tunes for the lyrics. I turned immediately to the song at lines 973-96 which is the only time Cleon is called ‘Cleon’ in Aristophnaes’ comedy (976). Halliwell’s recent translation (2022: 128) runs: ‘Joyous the dawn of that day will be, / for those of us alive at present / and people of the future / when Kleon meets his destruction’. The translation here reads: ‘It’ll be a frickin’ sweet day / for those in attendance / and those just passing through / if a certain leader of ours goes down in flames’. At this point the chorus start chanting ‘Drumpf’ to the dirge-like tune of the ‘Duke of Earl’. First why the circumlocution that avoids the actual name? Further, as the original is a happy little song in glyconics, I would have preferred something like ‘We can see clearly now that Trump has gone / we can see no obstacles in our way’. Rogers (1910: 136) argued that Aristophanes was here creating here a popular song which he hoped would be sung at public and private gatherings leading up to the election for generals a few weeks hence. Is there not an election next year?[7]
Notes
[1] A.H. Sommerstein, Aristophanes Knights (Warminster 1982); C.A. Anderson & T. K. Dix, A Commentary on Aristophanes’ Knights (Ann Arbor 2020); S. Halliwell, Aristophanes Acharnians, Knights, Wasps, Peace (Oxford 2022); G. Norwood, Greek Comedy (London 1931).
[2] See Peace 313-15 and Eupolis F 192.135-6 (Maricas) where Cleon-Paphlagon is explicitly related to paphlazein. Anderson and Dix (19-20) provide an interesting note about the further connotations of Paphlagonia.
[3] Douglas Young (1958) did something similar with the parabasis proper of Frogs in his rendering of that comedy into Lallans Scots (The Puddocks).
[4] The authors render their plea (580) not to disrespect them as ‘when we strut our stuff as civilians’, but this weakens the force of the Greek ‘not to get upset at our long hair and broaches’.
[5] D.M. MacDowell, Aristophanes and Athens (Oxford 1995); G. Delanty, ‘The Suits’ in D.R. Slavitt and P. Balmer (ed.), Aristophanes 3 (Philadelphia 1999).
[6] M.S. Silk, Aristophanes and the Definition of Comedy (Oxford 2000: 349) on what made Aristophanes great.
[7] A.H. Sommerstein, The Acharnians, Clouds, Lysistrata (London 1973); B.B. Rogers, The Knights of Aristophanes (London 1910); P. Meineck, Aristophanes Frogs (Indianapolis 2021, reviewed at BMCR 2023.02.03).